In the Shadows
by Lost Dove
Summary: A reflection by Ron on just what it means to be a sidekick, and what it feels like when that's all you can ever be.


In the Shadows  
  
When I was a child, I always wanted to be a hero. There were fables in my head with dragons and armor and swords. I would chase my fantasies through the fields with the whole-hearted abandon of children.  
  
If I was King Arthur - or no, Lancelot, or Robin Hood - and so my childhood passed.  
  
My brothers overshadowed me a little, but mostly they were big forms who passed away every year to a place I had only heard of. As I grew older and I could no longer run through fields, I instead found what I wanted in Quidditch - that game of promises, of hope and dreams and capabilities. When I watched the Chudley Cannons, I was the Chaser scoring goals, the Keeper and his save, the Seeker with his last triumphant lap, clutching the golden enigma.  
  
I always wanted to make my parents as proud as my older brothers had made them. I was so, so sure that I would. That I could go on being a hero.  
  
I guess I was doomed from the start.  
  
My best friend will always be my best friend. I don't hate him. I don't even dislike him. But he has stolen something from me as surely as I watched it slip away. And I am eternally grateful that I, of all people, was chosen as his best friend. It is something that even now seems unreal at times. But the gratefulness has a bitter side to it.  
  
I was confident in myself and my ability to be - original, interesting, intriguing. But I stepped towards that barrier through which I was to go, and someone walked up to us, and it all changed. Maybe it was always in my nature to be eclipsed by somebody, maybe it is partly my fault.  
  
And suddenly I was smaller.  
  
On the train that day, when I sat with him, a girl came in. And I wasn't the remarkable one. She turned her nose up at me and I have felt it ever since.  
  
I have always thought what if. What if my name was Harry Potter? What if I wasn't who I was? I know he lost his parents, I know he has no family, but at least he has a face. I am faceless.  
  
Was it always meant to be this way? I the follower, I the everlasting sidekick. A sidekick is honorable, but he is the one who falls back at the last moment, who never grabs attention, who is skipped over as the gaze is drawn to, inevitably, the hero.  
  
The hero. Never me.  
  
He does a brilliant job, doesn't he. I don't even know if I could do it. I sometimes doubt I could. But I have never been given the opportunity, and therein lies the rub.  
  
Maybe they think I don't see the way I'm sent away for Harry to show his quality once more through speech. Maybe they hope I don't notice the gentle push to the sidelines once more, the cue to leave the stage so the main character can shine.  
  
I never wanted it to be this way.  
  
And I thought, a long time ago, that it didn't matter if he was famous. I was positive I could get on the Quidditch team in second year, I had practiced on my brothers' Cleansweeps. I was good. I knew I was.  
  
And he got onto the team in first year.  
  
Do you blame me for giving up? Do you understand what it is like to know that whatever your best is, it's simply not good enough.  
  
I wanted, just once, to be better than him at something. Not because I needed to show him up, to rub it in his face, but because I needed to show myself. To reassure something inside of me.  
  
It's not an angry jealousy I feel. Sometimes I wonder if it's even jealousy at all. I would die for Harry. I won't ever lose that. But it's like watching someone do with his life what you thought you could do with yours.  
  
Hermione is the smart one, although I never once harbored any secret hopes for top marks that I did for other things. And I ask myself, are there even more places where I will never be first? What else does the hero always get?  
  
I'm used to it now. I'm used to no one ever knowing my name. Ron Weasley. It even sounds a little paltry to me too, now. I don't want to be always in centre stage. I just want a taste of what he must have every single day. Just a moment, a chance for me to prove that I am not restricted to second place.  
  
When I go home for the summer holidays now, there is no imagining. There is no longer the drifting away into daydreams I treasured so much. I would call myself jaded, but everyone does that now. I try to be the funny one, just as Hermione is the smart one, and Harry is the brave one, but I think I fall short.  
  
The world goes on bright and green and full of possibilities outside my small cracked window. I stay inside, in my room that is covered with the faces of people that smile at me from their pedestals. They remind me of everything I can't be.  
  
My room consumes me with its shrine of heroes.. 


End file.
